A big thank you…

It’s always a pleasure to know how much my blogs are enjoyed, and I would like to thank all my followers, especially those who ‘like’ and comment regularly on The Hazel Tree and my other blog, Jo’s Journal. Your responses are really important and I value them all.

I’d also like to thank everyone who has visited my new Facebook page. With Twitter, Facebook and two WordPress sites, I get the feeling sometimes that I’m juggling with plates. So far, things are holding up!

Earlier this month I came across an exciting new website called Historical Honey. The aim of the site is to present ‘history without the cobwebs’, and I responded to their call for contributors. I’m quite excited to say that I’ve just had my first article published on there, which is about James II of Scotland and his passion for weaponry. I’ve been invited to think of more ideas, which I’m hoping I will be able to do!

The siege gun known as Mons Meg, a present to James II from the Duke of Burgundy in 1457. I’m thinking a gift voucher would have cost less to send.

If you follow my Journal as well as The Hazel Tree, you’ll know that Colin and I recently paid a visit to Skye. The weather was dramatic and challenging, and sometimes we were running with the cameras to catch the sunshine while it lasted! I’ve now got some great ideas for new history features on The Hazel Tree. These will be coming up soon, but in the meantime please check out my Journal for some of our images.

Dun Beag broch, Isle of Skye

Finally, a big thank you to fellow bloggers Ed Mooney and Viking Lady Aine for nominating both The Hazel Tree and Jo’s Journal for a Versatile Blogger Award.

Interestingly, both Ed and Aine are based in Ireland. Ed takes some stunning and atmospheric photos of ancient sites such as ruined churches and castles – making me wish Ireland was more accessible! – while Aine is a Viking re-enactor who practises nalbinding (take a look!) and hand dyeing.

The conditions of the Versatile Blogger Award state that I must nominate 15 more blogs for the same award. This is where I have to start bending the rules. I can’t nominate just 15, because I follow lots of blogs and they are all good, for different reasons. Therefore – as I’ve done before on these occasions – I would recommend you to take a look at the ‘Blogs that I like’ which are listed in the right-hand margin of Jo’s Journal. All of them are worth following, and they are all written and hosted by great people, many of whom I consider to be my friends.

Then, I am to share seven things about myself. Here are seven of my favourite places, in no particular order:

Callanish stone circle

Traigh Bhan on Iona

Machir Bay on Islay

Kimmeridge Bay, Dorset

Carsaig, Mull

The Garvellachs

A mineral and fossil shop, anywhere

Thank you all again, and please bear with me while I try to shift annoying things like work around the important pleasure of writing features! 🙂

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Comments

What a beautiful photograph of bluebells to open this post with; I’m impatient to see displays like this here now. Congratulations on your excellent article for Historical Honey, I have no doubt that you’ll come up with lots more ideas for features for them. Congratulations also on your awards, which are very well deserved. I like your interpretation of the list of 7 things, and I think that was a good idea to direct people to your blogroll. I’ve had a couple of awards this year and have decided not to engage in giving them out the way I did last year, although it’s always very nice to receive them and I feel I ought to acknowledge them in some way. I’ve noticed that some people have a page for them rather than writing individual posts, which seems like a good idea, but whether I’ll ever get round to that or not, who knows? As you appreciate only too well, keeping up with writing blog posts and social media takes enough time already! It’s fun, though. 🙂

Thank you very much, Lorna, it’s very kind of you to say that. I enjoyed writing the feature for Historical Honey and I’m interested to see how the site develops. And the awards are always welcome, as you say. Facebook has been a difficult one – at first I felt compelled to check everything out and ‘like’ loads of sites, but that gives you a Home page that is endlessly refreshing and the whole thing gets out of hand! I think it has brought me a good number of new followers, though. We’ll wait and see!

Congratulations to your fantastic Facebook page, I like it! Now I follow you also on The Hazel Tree. Your pictures and blogposts are always very interesting! If you have time, you can also visit my german website http://www.volkerhoff.de. I wish you a nice weekend!